Did You Declare the Corpse? by Patricia Sprinkle Page B

come in on. The boulder against which I leaned was all that was left of the world. As I peered through the whiteness for any familiar landmark and saw none, terror rose in me.

    “You are in the middle of a national tourist attraction surrounded by other visitors,” I reminded myself. At the moment, however, I was utterly alone and increasingly nervous. People did get lost and wander away from civilization, even in national tourist attractions.

    I stood for several minutes hoping the mist would lift, but it merely got wetter and colder. To shore up my courage, I called out into the white nothingness a poem I once memorized in German and translated myself:
    “Strange to wander in the mist,
lonely is each bush and stone,
each bough by its brothers missed,
every one alone.”

    “Mac?” Dorothy’s voice floated down toward me. The way the mist distorted sound, I couldn’t tell how far away she was.

    “Here,” I called back, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Where are you?”

    I heard her say, “That’s someone from my tour. I’d better go. Will you come, too?”

    A man’s voice replied, “No, I’ll stay. This will let up eventually.”

    “Keep talking, Mac,” Dorothy called, “so I can find you.”

    For once I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Finally I began to belt out “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” the only song I could think of at the moment. I’d reached the second verse when Dorothy loomed up right next to my rock, her face glowing like it had been in Glasgow.

    “A bit disconcerting this, eh? But don’t you just yearn to paint everything you see?”

    “If I could see anything and I could paint, I might,” I conceded, “but I’d prefer something a whole lot more cheerful. Who were you talking to?”

    “Some chap I met,” she said carelessly. “He’s on a walking tour. Do you have any idea which way we go to get back?”

    “Not really. I can scarcely see you, much less the path.” I peered for a hint about which direction to take. That clammy whiteness was penetrating all my layers to the bone.

    We both strained our eyes and saw nothing. We called, and heard nothing.

    “Should we just start walking downhill and hope we find the path?” Dorothy wondered. “Or do you think we could get really lost? They wouldn’t leave without us, would they?”

    If I was her designated Captain Courageous, she had made a poor choice. I didn’t feel brave at all. Still, I made a stab at reasonable thought. “Watty can’t see to drive, and Joyce wouldn’t dare desert us on the first day out. Since we know that one end of the glen is all mountains, we might as well start walking. We’ll go downhill as far as we can, and turn left. If we start going uphill, we’ll know we’ve gotten turned around, and head back.” It sounded wise, but I knew we could wander up and down all day and never find our way out through the fog.

    Still, having nothing better to do, we took hands and began to feel our way through the cold, clammy cloud. Single file, clutching each other as much for comfort as for safety, we stumbled blindly downhill until we found what was little more than a deer track, studded with rocks. It didn’t look at all familiar, but we followed it down, grateful that it was lined on each side by clumps of heather that bounced us back like sponge rubber if we veered off the path.

    About two lifetimes later a slight breeze swayed the mist enough for me to see an outcropping of rock below us that looked familiar. “I think we’re going right.” I was so relieved, tears choked my voice.

    “But let’s don’t let go one another’s hands quite yet,” Dorothy begged.

    Looking for something to talk about, I asked, “Do you paint?”

    “I used to.” She bit off the words as if she regretted them, then rushed on like they had been the cork in her bottle. “I started college as an art major, and I’d paint all day long if—oh, sorry!” She fell, nearly taking me down